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asleep.”
    Her breathing stilled for a moment, then her eyelids crawled open. Her eyes swiveled to focus on me, but the rest of her stayed completely still. Her face was slack.
    “Leave me, human,” Penny said in Vei. Her voice was quiet, raspy. She rolled her head away from me. Greenish veins bulged in her neck, disappearing beneath a white blanket. I remembered the same rivers beneath Claudia’s pale skin back in the morgue. Hell, I could probably see them right now if I cared for another hallucination.
    “Soon,” I said. “I’m with the police. Special Investigations. I need to talk.”
    She groaned. A spasm clutched at her throat and she doubled over as if to cough, then she cringed and settled back down. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She looked like hell.
    Still, I had ghosts to get off my back. “What’s wrong with you? Did someone cause this?”
    No response. I clicked my fingers in her face, but she didn’t stir.
    “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Miss Coleman.”
    She rolled her head back toward me. “No help…for me.”
    I had to admit, she might’ve had the right of it. Her left arm was lying beside her, being fed by an IV hooked up to a bag behind her. Half a dozen track marks covered the crook of her arm and the veins of her forearm. At least a few of them were stained black. She’d taken Ink recently. The Vei drug was particularly popular among human junkies, but it still had its consumers among the less affluent Vei.
    “Maybe you can give me a hand, then,” I said. “Folks are dying, Vei and human. You know anything about that?”
    She shook her head slowly.
    “You sure? Because they all got what you got.” I thought about something Asshole Wade said. “Did you take a bad hit? Tainted Ink? Drugs? Is that it?”
    A shiver ran through her. “Don’t…remember…” Her eyes drifted closed. Goddamn it.
    “Hey, wake up,” I said. I took a step forward—contagiousness be damned—and shook her by the shoulder. “We’re not done yet.”
    “What do you think you’re doing?” a voice boomed from behind me.
    I jumped half-way out of my skin and released Penny. I spun to find the nurse standing in the open doorway, one hand on her hip and the other pointed at me in an accusatory fashion. Another nurse, a Vei male, stood beside her, eyeing me carefully.
    Breathing hard, I tried to get my heart rate under control. “Nothing.”
    She stomped toward me, and I decided I should come up with a more compelling story.
    “Just asking her a few questions,” I said. “My investigation—”
    “—is a pile of Kuroth shit.” She grabbed me by the arm and fast-walked me away from Penny. “There’s no Detective Johnson in Bluegate. I checked.”
    “Really?” What were the chances of that? I licked my lips.
    “You were on the television,” she said. “I saw you. I heard what you did. I think you should leave.”
    No. I wasn’t done yet, goddamn it! I tried to pull away, but the woman had a grip like a grizzly bear and a scowl to match.
    Claudia watched from the corner. The ghost’s skin started to flake while tears flowed down her green-tinged cheeks.
    I cast a final look back at Penny Coleman. She stared up at the ceiling through slitted eyes, her breathing slow and erratic. She had answers, I knew she did. I needed her!
    I had my hand around the bottle of Kemia in my jacket pocket before I realized what I was doing. I froze, the glass bottle cool against my palm, and let my breath come hard through my nostrils. Images flowed in my head, images of blood and fire.
    I imagined sapping the nurse over the head. She would fall, blood streaking from her forehead, while I sprinted back into the isolation room. I could Tunnel myself a hole in the wall and snatch Penny out of bed. She was sick; she wouldn’t weigh much. I’d put her over the back of my bike and take her somewhere I could get answers. And I would get those answers, whatever it took.
    Reality snapped back